Purpose: The field of immune tolerance after kidney transplantation has witnessed substantial growth in research over the decades. To systematically evaluate the trends and hotspots in this area, a bibliometric analysis was conducted spanning from 1976 to 2024. Methods: A bibliometric analysis was conducted using the Web of Science Core Collection database. VOSviewers, CiteSpace and the R package “bibliometrix” were used for visualization. Results: The analysis examined 1033 English articles, highlighting the involvement of 6608 authors from 3461 institutions across 53 countries/regions. The research showed a 4.14% annual growth in publications, peaking in 2016 and declining recently. The most cited article was “Marked prolongation of porcine renal xenograft survival in baboons through the use of alpha1,3-galactosyltransferase gene-knockout donors and the cotransplantation of vascularized thymic tissue (488 citations)” published in the Nature medicine (IF = 58.7) in 2005. The USA led in both publication volume and citations, with significant contributions from Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital. High-impact journals like Transplantation dominated. The keywords “tolerance”, “induction”, and “T-cells” exhibited the highest co-occurrence frequency. Meanwhile, “breast cancer”, “magnetic resonance imaging”, “deep learning”, “machine learning”, “neoadjuvant chemotherapy”, and “radiomics” were identified as keywords with the strongest recent citation bursts. Conclusion: This bibliometric analysis highlights the evolving trends and hotspots in research on immune tolerance after kidney transplantation. Future studies should continue to explore the integration of machine learning in understanding and predicting immune tolerance. Keywords: bibliometrics, publication, kidney transplantation, immune tolerance, survival
Yang et al. (Sun,) studied this question.